A Manifesto Of Distinct Averageness

It's been awhile since I've wallowed in such a strong feeling as this, but nothing has really ever impacted me over the last nine or so years more than this.

My biggest fear, the largest factor of self-loathing, is that I have become average. I think I have. Every day I become more and more average. One day, I won't even be just "average" anymore. I'll be less than average.

When I was much younger, as early as when I entered primary schooling, a lot of hopes and wishes and ambitions were heaved onto my back. "Amirul can do this or that", "Amirul's so smart", etc, etc. It was a good feeling being recognized for your skills, but it was clear that I took too much to my head. I grew egotistic and lived off my alleged prodiginess.

Though, in retrospect, you can say I've never been a real prodigy anyway. What have I ever done? Understand quantum physics at age six? No. Compose elaborate musical sonatas whilst in preschool? No.

Today I had a conversation with an awesome person, which for some reason or another, led to a sudden manic outburst of this fear I have.

I've suffered a chronic bout of averagophobia since age nine. Standard Three. In the middle of the school year I took an aptitude test called the PTS which allowed gifted students to skip a year and go straight to Year Five. I was one of those students. "Of course he made it," people would say. "Amirul's smart, he'd better have passed the exam."

Jumping from Year Three to Year Five was the single most significant event in my life. Alternate universes would have had Amiruls who never did jump - quietly happy, distinctly average Amiruls who had no jealous hatred of others more talented than he. Making that jump placed me in an even brighter spotlight for the family and some friends. "That's going to be a real stepping stone for Amirul."

No massive revelation of talent ever occured. In fact, it became a slow downslide. In Standard Five I was still a smart student, among the top scorers in my year, but it was clear from earlier on that I was by no means an academic-oriented student. It just wasn't my style. Whatever intelligence I had was never proven in test results or examinations. It disappointed my parents. It disappointed me. It still does, to this very day.

The slow decline became more pronounced a year later. The end of primary school examinations UPSR came up and I did horribly. An average score. People who had been watching me began to say, "Well, looks like Amirul's not that bright as we thought." The low score I got for UPSR was the second most significant event in my life. Had I excelled, I would have gone to a good school with classmates and peers of excellent standards, maybe the boarding school Dad went to. Opportunities would have been far and large. I went instead to a different school, government-run and -chosen for me, and it was also Distinctly Average.

There, for two years I lived in Distinct Averageness, my slow decline going even faster, but not fast enough for the effects to be pronounced loud enough to me. One day I was whisked away from that school, at my lowest point in the school: My friends had left or were leaving me, my classwork was horrendous, teachers were unpleasant or indifferent, and life seemed to simply pass me by while I stood in a standstill.

Moving to Sri Inai, a private school near the new house me and my family moved to, was the third most significant event of my life. There, an emphasis for balance in student lives really hit me hard. I got into a lot of things. Debates, school plays, the Prefect board (even though it only had five people), participated in class more, seriously started to write. Excluding a string of bad examples, life in Sri Inai was filled with great friends and great times.

It's easy for me to simply dismiss them now.

But it took four years to reverse the trend, and it was truly too little, too late. My dreams of achieving great things at a very young age seemed to finally hit the hard floor of reality. I was getting older each year, and nothing I did ever gave me the True Fame I desired, the recognition for my talents that had so long been ignored.

I want(ed?) to be a famous novelist. I wrote sporadically, posting extracts on certain websites which gave me a small measure of notability. Getting positive feedback about my work was a great pleasure of writing it - the greatest - but still it was not enough. When I received mail telling me to write novels and be published, I thought, yes, all in a matter of time.

So many years later but I have nothing but ignored, abandoned .Doc files in shelved-away computer folders.

Every day I wake up I think not "What will I do today?" but "What haven't I done today?" A list of objectives and ambitions now superceded by a list of failures and future failures. When I turned thirteen I thought, "There's all these years to go!" When I turned fourteen I thought, "Maybe it'll happen this year." When I turned fifteen I thought, "If it's going to happen, there's no better time than now." At sixteen it became, "Oh. I've got all that time yet I've done so little?" At seventeen, "Oh... I don't want to turn eighteen: I'm no longer the young person shielded by all those safety nets." Now, at eighteen, my only response is, "Oh."

Today I had a conversation with an awesome person. The stresses of the past came to a stretching point, and for some reason or another I burst out all those negative feelings. Those feelings are what make up this post.

For every letter that I type, I remind myself it's not too late to achieve what you desire, and it's up to you, young or not.

And for that, a giant Thank You, Samantha Chew. I'm sorry for accusing you of acquiring fake accents. I'm sorry for deriding other people and saying standards are low. I'm sorry for hating so many people when they have no hatred to me. I'm sorry that even when you try to placate my hate and alleviate my sorrows - and you do a fine job - I find some other hole to leak out my anger. I'm not good at a lot of things, and saying them in a small number of words isn't, but I hope you understand how profound your impact today has been. Both negative and positive. Merci beaucoup.